Spring Cake Pops - Tulips and Easter Eggs

Renshaw Baking invited me to take part in a challenge to create some spring themed cake pops and I gladly obliged. Do you like my bunch of tulips with a few Easter eggs hidden in there as well?

Renshaw kindly sent me a selection of products to use for this challenge, including several colours of Colour Melts, which is their equivalent of candy melts, and some sprinkles as well as some flower modelling paste. I thought about making a selection of animals like bunnies and chicks, or a set of Easter eggs, but liked the idea of making a bunch of flowers. I associate tulips particularly with spring, so I decided to make tulips out of cake and the petals from the flower paste. I created the design and technique myself.

 

To make cake pops, you need to start with a cake, which you can either make yourself or use a shop bought one. I used an Angel Cake from Sainsburys to save time, but also because I thought the three colours of the cake - white, yellow and pink - would work well with the cake pop design. Once you have your cake, crumble it into a large bowl.

Mix with enough buttercream until you have a dough consistency. Normally for cake pops I would then roll the dough into a ball but for tulips you want more of an oval or egg shape, pointed at one end.

Here are three of the Colour Melt tubs Renshaw sent - I received yellow, red, pink, white, blue and green. These are brilliant - so easy to use. Simply take the lid off the tub and, following the instructions on the side, put the tub in the microwave for 30 seconds, stir, and then microwave for another 20 seconds. When I use candy melts from another leading brand, as they come in a packet I need to pour the melted colours into a bowl, and eventually realised that I needed a fairly tall, narrow bowl so I use a mug. The tubs that these Renshaw Colour Melts come in is actually the perfect size - deep enough for you to dip your cake pops. And because you are using it in the tub, when the leftover Colour Melts have cooled, all you need to do is put the lid back on and you can use the rest another time.

I began with yellow, so here is my melted Colour Melt. I sometimes add a little oil to melted candy melts from other brands to make them a bit smoother and more runny but I didn't need to with these.

Dip the end of a cake pop stick into the melted Colour Melt and insert into the cake pop. Place in the fridge for half an hour.

In the meantime make the petals; flower and modelling paste can be rolled very thin and it then stiffens more than fondant which is essential here as you are going to dip the petals into the Colour Melts.

You can use a petal cutter if you have one, or just use a sharp knife. Cut out three petals per cake pop in an egg shape and set aside to harden.

When your cake pops are ready to dip, reheat the Colour Melt and dip the cake pop in at an angle, rotate so it is fully coated and then hold over the side of the pot for the excess to drip off. Then stand in either a cake pop stand or a piece of polystyrene to set.

To make the flower, take three of the flower paste petals and while the Colour Melt is still tacky, stick the petals on around the sides. It doesn't matter if they overlap slightly, in fact this looks quite good. Then bend the tops of the petals outwards slightly.

Leave to set and when the petals are firmly attached to the cake pop, dip the whole thing once more in the Colour Melt. Again, allow the excess to run off and place in the polystyrene or stand to dry.

Repeat with the remaining cake pops and petals in different colours.

I also decided to make a few Easter eggs to go in my bouquet. I dipped this cake pop in white Colour Melt and when it had dried, I dipped it again, up to the half way mark this time, in yellow. Finally I dipped the top in Renshaw's coloured sprinkles.

For this Easter egg I dipped the whole cake pop in white Colour Melt and then dipped it into a bowl of Renshaw sprinkles so it was fully covered.

Finally for this Easter egg, I dipped the cake pop in white and then melted some blue and using a teaspoon rotated the cake pop while drizzling the colour over the top.

Here is my finished vase of flowers- I also rolled out some leaves from the Renshaw flower paste and dipped those in the green Colour Melt.

A close-up, top-down view

Can you tell which one is real? Yes of course you can....!

The ultimate test though was when my boyfriend came home; I had made these while he was out for the evening. I said casually "do you like my bunch of flowers?" and he glanced over and said "oh yes, nice" - then did a double take and said "hang on, those are cake!". He was quite impressed and said they tasted very good as well as looking good!

 

Here you can see the inside of the cake pop

I'm sending these to Renshaw Baking's spring cake pop challenge.





I am also sending this to the Biscuit Barrel Challenge hosted by Laura at I'd Much Rather Bake Than... The entries don't have to be biscuits, but this month they do have to be fun!

I am also sending this to Love Cake, hosted by Jibber Jabber UK, as the theme is springing into Easter.

The theme for Calendar Cakes,. hosted by Rachel at Dollybakes, is also Easter.

How to make a Cupcake Bouquet for a Wedding

I was asked recently to make some cupcakes for a wedding; they turned out really well, as you can see here. But I was thinking about a way to make the cupcakes stand out on the buffet table and remembered I had seen something called a 'cupcake bouquet' on the internet - a way of arranging cupcakes so they look like a bunch of flowers. So I decided to have a go!

I made a basic vanilla cupcake which was fluffy and delicious; the recipe is here.

To make the cupcake bouquet, you need a ball made of polystyrene or a florist's oasis, and a flower pot that it will sit in. I bought the polystyrene ball from Hobbycraft. The wedding colours were white and pale pink and I happened to find this flower pot in a 99p Store as part of a set of three. It was almost the right size so I stuffed some bubble wrap into the bottom of the pot and sat the polystyrene ball on top.

If you are using oasis you will need to wrap it in clingfilm to stop it shedding. I decided to wrap my polystyrene ball in green tissue paper as I knew there would be gaps between the cupcakes and decided this would look like foliage.

I piped buttercream roses onto the cupcakes; you can easily find YouTube tutorials of how to do this so I won't go into detail. This was my first time piping buttercream roses and they are far from perfect; I used a fairly small nozzle and would rather have had a bigger one.

I used three cocktail sticks to fix each cupcake onto the ball. Because the polystyrene was quite tough and I didn't want to push the cakes too hard, I stuck three cocktail sticks into the ball first, and then gently pushed the cupcake onto the three sticks. A trick that Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker gave me was to start with the cupcake on the top and then work downwards and on both sides, or the whole thing might tip over!

It wasn't difficult at all to fix the cupcakes onto the polystyrene ball. I also scrunched up some more pieces of green tissue paper and used half a cocktail stick to secure them, for added foliage.

Here's a view of the cupcake bouquet from the top:

And from the front

I also tied a pink ribbon around the flower pot.

I was pleased with how this turned out and how easy it was; I gave it to the groom and for a moment he thought it was a real bunch of flowers! The bride realised immediately what it was of course.

I thought it made a nice focal point on the buffet table and was a bit different; here you can see it next to the cupcakes I made.